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<p>The house cleaning thing is interesting to me. Not once do I ever remember having to clean the house (beyond, of course, the typical picking up after oneself or straightening a room). Are they scrubbing toilets, polishing furniture, dusting, vacuuming? Do they do this during the year, too? I seriously don’t recall ever doing anything of that sort. I’ll have to page LINYMOM if she’s around.</p>
<p>At my D’s house they have a chore chart. They all clean the house. And, yes, the bathrooms they use are thier own responsibility. So, yeah, I personally think this is very healthy and I’m glad of it.</p>
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<p>Consolation, FWIW - the concept of parents around for rush is foreign to me, too.<br>
There might be some local alums who might decide to help, make coffee, etc. behind the scenes, but it required just coordination, not orchestration.</p>
<p>Yes, there was practicing of skits … but the girls who did that were the girls who were the theater majors and music majors in the first place, so presumably for them that was a fun activity, and the rest of us weren’t involved. </p>
<p>I was a rush director and I still don’t remember all the level of detail that’s being described here. You needed a few meetings to explain the system to the sophomores who were on the other side for the first time, you needed to inform the house of the panhel rules in terms of contact with rushees, you needed the skit-people to know what they were doing. It was preparing for a series of <em>parties,</em> for crying out loud. Not the Olympics.</p>
<p>Pizzagirl: This IS the Olympics of recruitment. There are some schools, mutual acquaintance’s school included, where this is recruitment on steroids. As I mentioned, my girlfriend from NU couldn’t understand it either. It’s all that I’ve seen so it seems “normal” to me.</p>
<p>Presents: (the term) is a west coast phenomenon where a pledge class is “presented” to the parents on Parents’ Weekend. It is a lovely day with all houses taking part. Think: a debutante ball sans dancing. And yes, dresses can be purchased or borrowed, as many houses have a closet with donated dresses. </p>
<p>And fraternities are very different from sororities, in terms of hygiene. We’ll just leave that alone. :)</p>
<p>I will say however, that the young women who are recruitment chairs/presidents/major officers in these houses graduate ready to take the lead in businesses and in life.</p>
<p>Ellebud- there are many ways a young woman can graduate ready to take the lead in business and in life that don’t involve ostracizing or alienating their classmates. My company hires hundreds of undergrads per year and when we screen resumes we specifically look for evidence of leadership among other factors… and in the 20+ years I’ve been in recruiting do not remember a single instance where membership in a sorority was a factor.</p>
<p>Young women are Managing Editors of newspapers, run significant charitable organizations in the cities where their colleges are located, are founders of NGO’s, initiate major arts and cultural programs on campus, and distinguish themselves in campus government or in their internships/jobs. Not a single one of these involves making a fellow student sit in a basement, wear a ballgown, or collect a fine from a classmate for some infraction.</p>
<p>I’ll take the other forms of leadership any day over this debutante business. And OP- please encourage your D to make a nicer set of friends.</p>
<p>I have to be honest, though, ellebud – USC has historically had a certain reputation (you know the moniker as well as I do) and I know that while the campus has done a lot to improve its image and academic reputation, it’s things like this description that would give me pause if I were considering sending my daughter there. </p>
<p>I had a great personal experience, and to blossom’s point, I DID learn leadership skills in that context (as well as other campus organizations). But I think there is a major difference between schools in which it’s lower key and in schools in which it’s the Olympics. And as I think about my own daughter, it’s fine with me that of the schools she is considering, the ones that do have Greek systems have ones that are on the low-key side. Life is too short for this kind of experience to be anything other than harmless fun and giggly get-togethers with newfound girlfriends. Good feelings and times, rather than bad feelings and bad times.</p>
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<p>Ain’t that the truth!</p>
<p>But the MIT house with which I was familiar was really quite well maintained and clean. My S’s house…well, have you ever watched Gordon Ramsay’s Kitchen Disasters, where he starts screaming “Oh My God!!” and calls for the steam cleaners? :D</p>
<p>I know we are talking about sororities here, not fraternities, but I must say that my S’s fraternity membership has so far actually led to personal growth and development of leadership skill on his part. (Hopefully the trade-off won’t be loss of too many brain cells…)</p>
<p>This is rediculous. Sit in the corner in the basement? Your daughter should laugh in their faces. She should do whatever the heck she wants to do to help the girls during the rush and if the sorority sisters don’t like it, let them call the cops. If she has access to the Internet, have her google “spine.”</p>
<p>D1 is running her sorority´s rush week this year. I have a new found respect for her. She and the committee will need to mobilize 120+ girls to work together. Considering they are all her peers, it will take a lot of diplomacy and will power to make it happen. It is always easier to get subordinates to do what you want, and it is much harder to negotiate with peers.</p>
<p>In finance (especially in sales and trading), there are a lot more people who were part of Greeks or athletes. I guess it probably has more to do with personality.</p>
<p>The law firm partner who hired me for my first associate job right out of law school happened to be an alum of my sorority. It definitely didn’t hurt to have that in common.</p>
<p>Pizzagirl, You may not be a fan of this particular kind of recruitment, rush on steroids or the Olympics of rush or whatever you want to call it. But the point is, the OP’s daughter chose to be in this sorority, knowing that certain work was required of all sisters. She doesn’t now get to decide that a high-pressure hyper-organized rush is stupid and she doesn’t feel like showing up and doing the work. The time for that decision was before she joined. Don’t want that kind of atmosphere? Don’t want your sisters to be mad at you because they’ve been working like beavers and you didn’t show up? Don’t join the sorority.</p>
<p>By its very nature, a sorority of 200 women is going to have to be more organized during rush. When a sorority has to be evaluating hundreds of potential new members, a system is necessary.</p>
<p>(Nothing would excuse being shut in a basement all alone. I’ve come to believe that’s not what’s going on with the OP’s, but if it is the OP’s daughter should leave her sorority and contact the Pan-Hellenic Council and the school’s administration.)</p>
<p>My daughter is in a sorority at a large state school and has been treated very well. Absolutely no hazing, instead she has received gifts and the older girls have made it a priority to invite the younger girls to lunches and/or dinners to get to know them better. If the problem stated by the OP really is happening then maybe it is very a unique experience.</p>
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Want people to show up on time? Tell them in a timely way when they’re supposed to show up, and don’t assume they’re spending the whole summer twiddling their thumbs waiting to hear from you. (Did you actually read the OP? You write as if you think the OP’s daughter could easily have made it on time, and just punted.)</p>
<p>Besides, the real issue here is not the other sisters “being mad” at the OP’s D, it’s what they did about it.</p>
<p><em>If</em> the sorority didn’t tell the OP’s daughter in a timely way when she was supposed to show up, then the sorority was at fault. But I’ve come around to ellebud’s point of view. This is a large, prominent sorority. We’re supposed to believe that they forgot to mention to their members that the members had to come back early in the fall, to work on recruitment, an enormous job (hundreds of women going through the sorority)? It just slipped their minds? But somehow everyone else, including other sorority sisters who arrive on campus by air, managed to get there anyway? And when the OP’s daughter discovered the conflict, no one was able to work out some sort of substitute job, since she couldn’t do the job she was supposed to do?</p>
<p>Or, we could believe that a teenage girl might not be paying attention at sorority meetings, might not want to go back to college early, and might not be entirely forthcoming with her parents. </p>
<p>I know which I believe.</p>
<p>*Presents: (the term) is a west coast phenomenon where a pledge class is “presented” to the parents on Parents’ Weekend. It is a lovely day with all houses taking part. **Think: a debutante ball sans dancing. **And yes, dresses can be purchased or borrowed, as many houses have a closet with donated dresses. *</p>
<p>My Presents had dancing…so some do. It was very much like a debutante ball.</p>
<p>(I can’t think of ONE GIRL who was ever mean to a sister or to others on campus.)</p>
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<p>Whoa, whoa, whoa – Cardinal Fang, I never said that it was ok for someone to shirk the responsibilities of an organization that she freely joined, any more than the tennis player can blow off practice or the newspaper writer can blow off the deadlines. (Though presumably there is some latitude or grace or we’ll-work-with-you-here given for someone who is coming from overseas, who has more constraints than the average girl in terms of being able to get onto campus by a certain date.) I find the concept of being “banished to the basement to sit alone and not to speak to anyone” like a 2 yo in a timeout ridiculous. If that’s what really happened. If, OTOH, it was “well, sorry, because you weren’t here on time, you’re going to have to pour the water and the coffee and do some of the more behind the scenes stuff,” that’s different.</p>
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<p>I was hired out of undergrad to a position that the company had historically recruited at the grad level - they had a pilot program my year to explore going to undergrads, and I was the pilot (or the plane, one or the other). Anyway, they came back to campus a few years later, and I absolutely told a younger sorority sister who I thought would have real potential in this field about it, gave her all the inside scoop, things to say, etc. She was hired as well, has been very successful and credits me with getting her into the position.</p>
<p>CF: We may not agree on Greek life. But we know our kids. As I mentioned in a pm: This may in fact be cultural. The girl “wasn’t allowed to talk” translates into…she wasn’t allowed to talk to the pnms because she didn’t go to rush camp. And in the party time, having done her duty of pouring water there was nothing to do but sit. And where were the girls who were rotating? They might have had to be in a different part of the house, like a downstairs rec room (a cellar?). And again, this could be a cultural thing wherein a girl has servants to get her water, she doesn’t do the getting. </p>
<p>One earlier poster said it best: hazing takes place in secret, away from adults and other responsible parties. Allso amazing is that the rest of the sorority (199 or them) plus the girls in the other houses managed to know when recruitment was, when rush camp was and what was expected of them</p>
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I’m increasingly convinced you didn’t bother to read the OP. She said they were notified, but so late that changing the flight would have been prohibitively expensive. In the world I inhabit, this would be a perfectly valid excuse, and when the OP’s daughter explained the situation to her sisters they would have said, “don’t worry about it. We should have gotten the word out sooner.” That’s how mature, reasonable people behave. I have no idea if it’s how sorority sisters typically behave.</p>
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You really should read the OP. This is specifically addressed.</p>
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<p>Oh please. Who cares if it is hazing or not, technically speaking? Girls can be inhumane mean spirited jerks to one another, whether in or out of a sorority. Just because something doesn’t fit a label, or isn’t formally sanctioned against, doesn’t make it kind, mature, decent, or respectful. </p>
<p>All kinds of s**t can take place under the radar screen of ‘authorities’. Shunning, ignoring, giving someone the silent treatment, is rarely ever formally sanctioned against in any environment, yet research shows its one of the most insidious and psychologically cruel forms of abuse. And ever so effective in its invisible nature, since it can always be denied, and the target can be accused of imagining things, and ‘being paranoid’.</p>